• Radiation detection equipment installed in four Mexican ports

    The Megaports Initiative is a U.S. Department of Energy program intended to enhance the ability of ports around the world to detect and interdict illicit shipments of special nuclear and other radioactive materials; Under the initiative, radiation detection gear and protocols were implemented in the Mexican ports of Manzanillo, Altamira, Lazaro Cardenas, and Veracruz, through which 92 percent of Mexico’s containerized cargo pass

  • Raytheon's Space Fence technology tracks space debris

    Space debris threatens systems the U.S. military and economy depend on every day, including satellites that power navigation, weather and critical infrastructures; the Space Fence program is capable of detecting more and much smaller objects in low earth orbit

  • Measuring DHS effectiveness monitoring chemical plant safety standards

    The events of 9/11 triggered a national re-examination of the security of facilities that use or store hazardous chemicals in quantities which, in the event of a terrorist attack, could put large numbers of Americans at risk of serious injury or death; the GAO issued a report on how DHS ensures compliance with chemical facilities security standards

  • The five biggest stories at Black Hat

    The annual Black Hat Briefings conference, held last week in Las Vegas, is the world’s biggest, and arguably the most important, gathering of security researchers; here are the five biggest stories to take away from last week’s Black Hat meeting in Las Vegas

  • Global warming unequivocal in its advance, says NCAA expert

    Global warming is unequivocal in its advance and will lead to more record-setting temperatures, says Warren Washington, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research; in a talk at Sandia Lab, Washington presented graph after graph showing how various atmospheric processes have combined to create stronger rainfall near the equator and more intense droughts in the subtropics, as well as sea-level rises and increased storm surges

  • Predictions by climate models are flawed, says MIT meteorology expert

    Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Richard Lindzen, a global warming skeptic, says that too much is being made of climate change by researchers seeking government funding; he said their data and their methods did not support their claims; for thirty years, climate scientists have been “locked into a simple-minded identification of climate with greenhouse-gas level. That climate should be the function of a single parameter (like CO2) has always seemed implausible. Yet an obsessive focus on such an obvious oversimplification has likely set back progress by decades,” Lindzen said

  • Large, magnitude 8 earthquakes hit New Zealand with regularity

    A new study finds that very large earthquakes have been occurring relatively regularly on the Alpine Fault along the southwest coastline of New Zealand for at least 8,000 years

  • Studying the physics of avalanches

    Snow avalanches, a real threat in countries from Switzerland to Afghanistan, are fundamentally a physics problem: What are the physical laws that govern how they start, grow, and move, and can theoretical modeling help predict them? New study offers answers

  • Game lets players try their hand at computer security

    A new game — Control-Alt-Hack — gives teenage and young-adult players a taste of what it means to be a computer-security professional defending against an ever-expanding range of digital threats; the game’s creators will present it this week in Las Vegas at Black Hat 2012; educators in the continental United States can apply to get a free copy of the game while supplies last; it is scheduled to go on sale in the fall for a retail price of about $30

  • Northrop Grumman delivers Nationwide AIS to Coast Guard

    Northrop Grumman has delivered its Nationwide Automatic Identification System (AIS) to the Coast Guard; the system provides a more comprehensive view of vessels bound for and navigating within U.S. ports and waterways

  • Capturing CO2 directly from air is chemically, economically viable

    With a series of papers published in chemistry and chemical engineering journals, researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology have advanced the case for extracting carbon dioxide directly from the air using newly developed adsorbent materials

  • Pulling CO2 from air feasible, if still costly, way to curb global warming

    Emerging techniques to pull carbon dioxide from the air and store it away to stabilize the climate may become increasingly important as the planet tips into a state of potentially dangerous warming; lower-cost technology is a stumbling block so far

  • You want to report a pothole? There’s an app for that

    The city of Boston offers residents a new app – Street Bump – which will automatically report potholes they encounter; all the driver has to do is install the app and place the smartphone on the dashboard or in the cup holder; the app uses the phone’s motion detector and GPS locator to report potholes

  • Temperature rise, CO2 follow each other closely

    The greatest climate change the world has seen in the last 100,000 years was the transition from the ice age to the warm interglacial period; new research indicates that, contrary to previous opinion, the rise in temperature and the rise in the atmospheric CO2 follow each other closely in terms of time

  • Per capita CO2 emissions in China reach EU levels

    Global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2)  increased by 3 percent last year; an estimated cumulative global total of 420 billion tons of CO2 has been emitted between 2000 and 2011 due to human activities, including deforestation; scientists suggest that in order to limit the rise in average global temperature to 2°C above pre-industrial levels, cumulative CO2 emissions in the period 2000–50 cannot do not exceed 1,000 to 1,500 billion tons